Mark Zuckerberg or: The Modern Prometheus

Year: 2015

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Technology is evil and we should be afraid of it. This has been a running narrative of filmmaking since the very beginning. Henry Frankenstein learned the consequences of playing God in the 1930’s, 1950’s scientists wreaked havoc in their reckless pursuit of knowledge in nuclear flicks like Godzilla or Them!, and technology usurped humanity in the likes of Demon Seed and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then things got real weird in the 80’s as machines grew self aware in The Terminator, WarGames, and even the crummy slasher Evilspeak.

Then, once we escaped The Matrix, came the Japanese fears of their own accelerated advances in Ringu, Pulse, and One Missed Call. But as society flashes forward in leaps and bounds, so do our celluloid perils. We are no longer afraid of clunky VHS tapes and desktop computers because we’re dealing with tech on a global scale Every computer is connected via the Internet and harm can come to you remotely, whether it be a virus, a catfisher, or merely sustained surveillance. This has been the subject of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and even this month’s Spectre. But while technology’s scope has expanded, our contact is more personal than ever thanks to social media, online shopping records and browser histories.

Ex Machina has entered the room.

In Ex Machina, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young programmer working for an enormously profitable tech company. When the reclusive company owner Nathan (Oscar Isaac) invites Caleb to spend the week at his secluded mountain lodge/fortress, he jumps at the chance to meet the great man. He’s surprised to learn that Nathan is a hard-drinking, lascivious man with a strange, glaring intensity, but he’s even more surprised to learn that he has been invited to test Nathan’s new prototype of artificial intelligence, a female android named Ava (Alicia Vikander).

He discovers that Ava has an astonishingly human personality, which causes him to question her artificiality as well as his own identity. When tensions arise in the compound, he must decide whether to side with Ava, who appears to be growing a romantic interest in him, or Nathan, whose intentions seem more and more murky.

I mean, he didn’t even include a “dislike” button.

Forget that Spectre “Christoph Waltz is monitoring our YouTube videos” claptrap, this is the true tech suspense film for our generation. Ex Machina explores our implicit trust of gadgetry within the context of a burgeoning relationship. It’s a more twisted version of Her, a dark attraction that could easily be superimposed with a tech-obsessed dad and Siri, or Amazon’s Alexa. Aa we grow more introverted and cut off our human interaction, technology slowly begins to fill the void. Of course, there are two sides to every modern development, but Ex Machina is an eloquent argument for the opposition.

Ex Machina’s thesis is delicately painted on a visual canvas by writer-director Alex Garland, with an attention to detail that matches his incredibly nuanced script. Working closely with production designer Mark Digby’s stark, modern steel and glass architecture, Garland creates vivid images, utilizing pristine reflections as a recurring motif. The rest of Ex Machina’s aesthetic builds off this cold but impeccably composed photography, coming to life in equal measures during dangerous situations that are flooded with blood red light or reflective moments realized in crisp black and white.

The film moves through space and time like an intricate ballet with a equally mechanical perfection. It does not rush its story, nor does it press its symbolism, some of which is strikingly obvious, but all of which allows the viewer to approach on their own time. One early on reveal is the slightest bit clunky, but the plot otherwise slides powerfully forward like a sinuous snake, fangs bared to deliver the killing blow.

Ex Machina inspires spontaneous poetic rapture in film critics. I apologize for the inconvenience.

The film’s unbearably slippery, sleek aesthetic carries over to the score, which is halfway between the guttural synth of The Guest and Disasterpeace’s electric serenade from It Follows. It’s a hardly original post-Carpenter sound, but it flows through Ex Machina like an electronic river, powering its dark, emotional left.

However, the true centerpiece of Ex Machina is its human, or rather – inhuman element. Alicia Vikander’s performance is a flat-out stunning piece of character creation. Her complex motivations and unnatural physical poise are captured flawlessly by her wide, expressive eyes. Ava is no droning Doctor Who Dalek or monotone sci-fi creation with arms covered in rubber tubing. She is a shaded, detailed being, far more than either of her onscreen companions. And yet she is unmistakably, uncannily artificial. The single best acting moments of the entire film come when her voice acquires a subtly robotic catch in the middle of certain sentences, betraying her fabrication. Just like the rest of the film, it is elegant and unimaginably precise.

Gleeson and Isaac also have their moments of glory (especially the latter, whose larger-than-life portrayal is ineffably unnerving), but this is Vikander’s show through and through. She is Ex Machina in a microcosm: incredibly calculated and accomplished, hiding a dark secret behind a modern, accessible exterior. It’s an exciting, atmospheric watch. Don’t bring the DVD along on a date night, but the next time it rains (which might be never, here in California), put on your thinking cap and pop it in. Just make sure your phone is shut off, or Siri might get jealous.

TL;DR: Ex Machina is a sleek, chilling technological thriller with razor sharp subtext.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 943

Popcorn Kernels: Crown Jules

Alright, mini reviews are going to be a thing that happens from here on out. Although I will lavish my usual extended attention on marathons, current flicks, and Census Bloodbath features, I just don’t have the constitution to pen epic treatises about every single film I see anymore. I remain committed to reviewing everything that passes through these eyes, but not quite in the obscene quantity of previous months. That said, let’s hit the town with a pair of alternative Julia Roberts flicks for the sophisticated palate.

Erin Brockovich

Year: 2000

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart

Run Time: 2 hours 11 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The true story of a poor single mom who endeavors to provide legal help for a town being poisoned by a nearby factory.

Frequent readers will know that biopics really aren’t my cup of tea. If I want to step into a movie to escape boring reality, I don’t want to be forced to sit through anybody else’s boring reality, no matter how loud they shouted in the 90’s. Maybe that’s reductive, but for me truth is lamer than fiction. At least as a general rule of thumb.

That said, Erin Brockovich is pretty OK. Is it about half an hour too long? Definitely. Is it self-indulgent? Sure. Does Aaron Eckhart work in the role of a mutton chopped biker daddy? Hell no! But, like her or not, Julia Roberts is a damn movie star. She holds sway over the camera like a mystical snake charmer, no matter what role she has taken on.

This role in particular is a real boon to her talents. Breaking from her America’s Sweetheart persona, Roberts’ Brockovich is no apple pie-baking princess. She’s a crass, vulgar woman who dresses to show off her body and doesn’t take no guff from nobody. But she is also a woman of depth and compassion who makes great personal sacrifices for people in need, recognizing that same need in her own past. The film is a truly intriguing character study of a woman who refuses to let the world change her and pushes back against the polite, civilized society that is content to sit idly by while the citizens of a small town waste away of cancer and other maladies.

Roberts pours her heart into her depiction of this woman, proudly wearing her flaws on her sleeve. It’s a brave and open performance that never indulges in the jingoistic sentimentalism of many biopics. Moments like Erin discovering that she has missed her child’s first word are raw and real without a Hollywood gloss. It’s about as gritty and intense as that other Aaron Eckhart movie, come to think of it.

Director Steven Soderbergh, who I must confess I’ve never had any particular affection for, captures this story with an Americana flair that’s gorgeous, if a little needless. The preponderance of suffuse backlight and American Beauty-esque electronica make the whole affair seem like an ethereal dream, and the jaundiced yellow that inexplicably infects every one of his films provides an appealing counterpoint to the cool blue nighttime scenes. I wouldn’t argue that the aesthetic serves the story for better or for worse, but at least it’s nice to look at.

So, yeah. A pretty good biopic. By my standards, that makes it a classic of the form. While I shan’t be revisiting this film anytime soon, or – if I can get away with it – ever, I don’t regret the wand’ring hours I spent with one Miss Brockovich.

Rating: 7/10

Sleeping with the Enemy

Year: 1991

Director: Joseph Ruben

Cast: Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Kevin Anderson

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After a woman fakes her own death to escape her abusive husband, he doggedly pursues her while she tries to establish a new life.

Every year for Halloween, Sergio and I have a double feature of spooky movies. Each of us gets to choose one, and Sergio’s pick this year was Sleeping with the Enemy, the Julia Roberts thriller. I reluctantly conceded to this decision, because the alternative was Titanic. Let’s just say my hand was forced. However, you can imagine my surprise when the 1991 flick betrayed more than a little carryover from the tropes and traditions of the slasher genre, which had hit rock bottom with a resounding splat but two years earlier.

While Sleeping with the Enemy is about as far as you can get from a body count movie (in an unlikely turn of events, even the obvious cannon fodder character is spared), the film draws from the spiritual core of the horror subgenre. While it’s essentially a character drama with a little raw tension for flavor, it’s cut from the same thematic cloth as flicks like Friday the 13th or Prom Night: What if a relentless, all too real stalker was hellbent on tearing your life- and your body – apart.?

To achieve this atmosphere, Sleeping with the Enemy rummages through the slasher’s bag of tricks. Even in innocuous scenes, the filmmakers continuously impose a sense that Julia Roberts’ Laura Burney is being watched. Sam Raimi-esque steadicam slinks around her home, reminding audiences of the unnerving POV shots from serial killers like Michael Myers and his brood. Many scenes also end by slowly pulling away from the action, a move that horror-savvy viewers instinctively expect to telegraph a lurking killer abruptly lurching into the frame. 

The stalker is even given a distinctive calling card – he wears Laura’s wedding ring on his pinky finger next to his own, a gracefully creepy touch that does wonders for the heart rate. And the finale scene is practically pulled from the pages of Scream, which would jab an adrenaline shot into the dead slasher’s heart five yeas hence.

This is all rather effective, because although the tools come from a lowly and unloved genre, they had become a major facet of the cinematic lexicon. By reimagining them in a more respectable context, it tapped into their cultural power to bring fear to an entirely new audience. Of course, the primary goal of Sleeping with the Enemy isn’t terrifying the audience, but it does pack a more spine-tingling punch than the average thriller potboiler.

The story the film does focus on telling is a simple one; that of a woman struggling to take her life back from the talons of a manipulative and wicked man. The opening sequence, which depicts her loveless marriage, is a harrowing ordeal and a distressingly realistic portrayal of domestic abuse, but it’s what follows that is even more heart-wrenching. Laura struggles to trust again, tentatively entering a relationship with her drama professor neighbor (both bear bafflingly curly manes of hair that I constantly worry will get stuck together like Velcro), but fearful of intimacy and the knowledge that at any moment her husband might find her. As a  character study of a damaged woman attempting to heal, it’s not bad, although it does shade into queasy Hallmark treacle at times.

The middle third is perhaps not quite as visceral or impactful as it could be and a late reveal is silliness of the highest order, but overall, Sleeping with the Enemy is a thrillingly functional paranoid drama. There’s a reason it isn’t remembered with the lurid fondness of a Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction, but it’s definitely an unpolished gem that’s worth a second look.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1238

International Woman Of Mystery

Year: 2015

Director: Paul Feig

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Is it just me, or are Apatow comedies better when he’s not actually directing them? So far, I’d say the best to come from his stable are pretty unequivocally Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Nick Stoller’s Neighbors. Feig’s most recent bout in the ring isn’t exactly proving me wrong. Spy, his newest Melissa McCarthy vehicle, might just be the apotheosis of everything that that collective has been working toward: a brash, fearless, and fun genre exercise that blows everything that came before it right on out of the water.

Hell, it even blows itself out of the water.

Spy tells the story of CIA agent Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), a timid woman who squanders her potential by working behind a desk, providing navigation for the inexplicably British Agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), on whom she has a crush the size of a moon-destroying rocket. When one of his missions is compromised by the wicked heiress Reina (Rose Byrne), the CIA discovers that she knows the identities of all their active agents. In desperation, they send Susan after her, because she’s unrecognizable.

Thus begins a heartwarming tale of a mousy pushover stepping into the spotlight to become the butt-kicking superspy she always knew she could be. Well, in time. First she must fight her way through a series of wacky hijinks, aided by her coworker and friend Nancy (Miranda Hart).

Who I recognized from this awesome Mamma Mia! parody because I’m cultured.

Spy is, to put it lightly, an experience. It’s a female-led Austin Powers that - like Bridesmaids – isn’t FOR women. It’s WITH women for EVERYONE. And there really is something for everybody here. The raunchy comedy is spliced onto a legitimate action thriller that devotes as much attention to high octane spy escapades as it does to belly laughs.

While we’re on the subject of bellies, I really have to commend this film for not using McCarthy’s weight as a punchline. She’s a remarkably talented comic actress, but previous vehicles for her like the abhorrent Identity Thief center her character and humor entirely around her weight It’s crass, it’s unfair, and it’s dreadfully boring.

In Spy, her character has her fair share of flaws, but her size isn’t even a factor in her initial lack of appeal. In fact, the only joke that could really be considered a fat joke is just a pratfall. The truly unfortunate thing is that the trailers latched onto that scene like it was a slice of toast bearing the face of the Virgin Mary, hopelessly misrepresenting the film and causing me to skip it in theaters. Hence, this egregiously late review.

But I have since rectified my mistake, and I am here to tell you that, if you haven’t seen Spy, you’re missing out. Humor is entirely subjective, of course, but the fact that both Sergio and I found Spy to be the funniest movie of the year should tell you something. We’re hardly ever on the same page.

Hell, that guy loves Winter’s Bone, which is as far from being a Brennan movie as a Rob Zombie reboot of Grease.

Spy’s humor comes from a variety of places: spy parody, McCarthy improve, Apatowian gross-out antics, and secondhand embarrassment all jockey for position. But in addition to McCarthy, who is a reliably bankable humorist, big chuckles come form two unexpected performers. First of all, Rose Byrne  - who is already well on her way to comic superstardom thanks to her being the single best element of Neighbors – is incontestably hilarious as the spoiled and evil antagonist with a heart of gold leaf. Her performance is so consistently out of left field that she always keeps you on your toes.

But the true lightning in a bottle standout of Spy is one Jason Statham, as McCarthy’s careless and vain coworker who tails her incognito as she attempts to covertly carry out her mission. He distills the essence of every Jason Statham character into one stiletto sharp caricature, blowing his typical badass bravado tremendously out of proportion. It’s a genius portrayal, a character with infinite confidence in his own abilities without actually being any help at all. He is not always served well by the Apatow-standard editing, which just lets him keep going and neglects to trim his one-liners to an appropriate amount. I call this the “quip tsunami” technique, and while hilarious at time, it’s less controlled here than in similar films. Nevertheless, Statham is a sparkling presence in an already uncontrollably fun movie.

The best thing about Spy is that, even if you utterly detest the comedy, you can tune it out and still have a one hundred percent functional spy picture. The action is ludicrous and over-the-top, but it’s not like you’ll get anything different if you shell out for Spectre. And this way you don’t have to pretend to care about Bond’s awkward, fumbling chemistry with his wallpaper love interest. It’s a win-win! Spy’s action benefits from a truly staggering budget for a comedy, which allows it to indulge in just as much globetrotting splendor as the best of the best.

With the humor of a Bridesmaids and the absurd, slightly inappropriate swashbuckling of an Octopussy, Spy is just plain a fun time at the movies. The best of the constantly improving McCarthy-Feig pictures, Spy actually gives me high hopes for the new Ghostbusters. Sleuth it out of Redbox and snag yourself a good time!

TL;DR: Spy is an excellent, female led comedy that combines Bondian thrills with uproarious comedy.
Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 941

This Honky Grandma Be Trippin'

Year: 2015

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

M. Night Shyamalan. A once proud director whose name has since become a punchline not even Fozzie Bear could screw up. After helming one of my favorite horror flicks of all time, The Sixth Sense, he took a break from filmmaking. Though, that isn’t to say he quit directing. After a string of increasingly mediocre twist pictures, he began one of history’s longest sustained barrages of box office duds, smashing his credibility to smithereens with high profile dreck like The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth.

So here we sit, a good decade between us and his last remotely appealing film. Enter Jason Blum. Given free reign and an appropriately miniscule budget, our M. Night is afforded one last chance to get his groove back: the found footage thriller The Visit. So, did it work? Let’s journey over the river and through the woods to find out.

To grandmother’s Blumhouse we go.

In The Visit, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) is making a documentary. A young film buff, she has decided to record herself and her younger brother Tim (Ed Oxenbould) while they spend a week at their grandparents’ isolated farmhouse. Their mother (Kathryn Hahn) has been estranged from her parents for 15 years, so Becca is hoping that this trip  - which also allows mom to spend some quality time with her new boyfriend – will be an opportunity to both meet her grandparents and attempt to rebuild a long-burned bridge.

Almost immediately, things take a turn for the wacked-out. Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) are outwardly kind and charming. But after 9:30 PM, Nana takes after her famous cookies and goes a little nuts, rattling ferociously around the house in the nude. Becca’s borderline compulsive instinct to chalk things up to “old people, am I right?” quickly wears thin as the serene winter visit quickly descends into nightmare.

Don’t mind the creaking. It’s just an old house.

If you take only one thing from this review, make it this: In spite of obvious deficiencies, The Visit is Shyamalan’s best work in a decade and change. It also leaves the distinct impression of a writer-director endeavoring to regain his instincts, not always succeeding but slowly earning back his goodwill. The seasoned Shyamalan watcher (I’m sorry, by the way) will notice DNA of his favorite themes lodged within The Visit like pineapples in an upside–down cake. There’s the obligatory twist, of course, though he knows by now that he needs to pull back from the showboating endings that defined and capsized his middling works.

We also get a return to his Signs standby of child characters with ludicrously specific quirks that – of course – come into play in the finale (“I’ve compulsively memorized every song in the Taylor Swift discography! Gee, I sure hope those junior high girls outside stop trying to murder us.”). This trope, she does not work too well. It’s blatantly telegraphed and it makes less than no sense, but just like the wan family drama laced through the whole thing, you can tell he’s trying and it’s hard to begrudge him of that. Plus, after the hot dog speech in The Happening, I’m not exactly fazed by a couple dud payoffs. At least what I’m watching physically resembles a motion picture.

There’s some scattered slick patches of ineptitude spread throughout The Visit: exposition that’s indicated with huge neon lettering, idiotic character decisions at every turn, intentionally inaccurate language used to obfuscate a twist, and a strong sense that the script dearly wished it took place in the 90’s. But these are flaws The Visit comes by naturally and genuinely. It might be far from perfection, but it’s a totally serviceable found footage feature with a delightful mixture of spooky and kooky.

And just a little ooky.

I’m legitimately astonished at how much fun I had watching The Visit. In fact, it might be the perfect coda to the found footage fad, which hit a resurgence with Paranormal Activity and died a lonely death with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, nor could it, but it utilizes its perspective in a satisfying manner, even physically incorporating the camera into the action, a trick I haven’t seen since the only good moment in the abysmal 2008 remake Quarantine.

The slightly misaligned shots offer the merest whiff of realism, allowing the scare gags (which follow Paranormal Activity’s recurring nightly pattern) to creep under your skin a little at a time. The slow boil shocks are generally effective, utilizing offscreen space well and offering a glimpse into a world just slightly to the left of normal. For a while, the “it’s just a creaky old grandma” excuses are even believable. The tension builds and builds, deftly playing with the audience. In one of my favorite scenes, a scare is revealed to be something mundane until a subtle last minute reversal clues you into the fact that something is terribly wrong here. You’ll know it when you see it, and that kind of moment proves that Shyamalan might just be back on track to give us nightmares again.

The most unexpected joy to be found in The Visit is that it’s funny. It’s not Sam Raimi slapstick hilarity, but a kind of down-home quiet humor permeates the film. I suppose this tone should have been expected from the casting of Kathryn Hahn, one of our generation’s most underrated comic actresses, but it melds so perfectly with the darker horror elements that you almost don’t even notice it’s there. It’s just a subtle undertone in the background that flavors the world of the film with another shade of reality. They do occasionally derail into nightmarishly goofy territory that would make Adam Sandler blush (no spoilers, but if you’re familiar with the Pokérap, you’ll get some disconcerting déjà vu), but for the most part, the balance is pitch perfect.

The Visit’s surprisingly quality can largely be attributed to the performers, who sell the hell out of a somewhat silly conceit. Oxenbould somehow inhabits an utterly smackable character and makes him into the film’s best comic asset, DeJonge shows some remarkable nuance, subtly altering her performance to shift between reality and when she’s vamping for the camera, and both the grandparents give remarkably unsettling physical performances that somehow evoke both kindly grandparents and looming birds of prey.

There’s really a lot to like about The Visit. It’s an impure jewel, to be certain, but a jewel just the same. With this enticing blend of found footage frights and childlike comic antics, Shyamalan has achieved the impossible: I’m actually excited for his next film.

TL;DR: The Visit is Shyamalan's best film in a decade.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1139

Spy Another Day

Year: 2015

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Christoph Waltz

Run Time:  2 hours 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Now, please keep in mind that I haven’t watched a James Bond movie since I was 14, so maybe they’re all brainless and repetitive and I had too much in common with them to notice. But considering that Goldfinger flits by at 1 hour and 50 minutes and the superspy’s latest effort – Spectre – rolls in creaking and groaning at 2 ½ hours, I daresay the original films didn’t take themselves quite so seriously.

Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself. Spectre is the 24th entry in the James Bond franchise, the fourth for Daniel Craig since Casino Royale rejuvenated the series back in 2006. It’s also the first to appear on the pages of this blog, and it makes a game attempt to ensure that it’s the last. I have enough fondness for the previous entries that I look forward to reviewing them one day, but Spectre’s strip-mining of Bond’s past glories is a recipe for half-baked rehash that leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Coming soon: the Popcorn Culture Cookbook.

I’m going to streamline the plot as much as possible, because to go into detail would require an atlas, unflagging interest in the high-end car industry, and several gallons of Absolut. Here goes: James Bond (Daniel Craig) is an MI6 agent investigating an evil syndicate known as Spectre led by the shadowy Hans Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), based on a clue left for him by the late M (Dame Judi Dench, in a cameo that she could have done from her living room).

Meanwhile, the current M (Ralph Fiennes, who I do believe was just trying to tear England apart with a group of wizard Nazis, so this is awkward) is battling through tangles of red tape thanks to C (Andrew Scott), a government official who wants to shut down MI6 and commence surveillance of the world’s digital traffic in alliance with several major world powers, bringing espionage into the 21st century. It is up to M, his secretary Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), and gadget guru Q (Ben Whishaw) to preserve the old ways and avoid going the way of the Walkman.

Oh, also Bond hooks up with Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the daughter of a previous bad guy who we’re expected to remember. They scoot across the globe, sticking together even though they have the chemistry of Elton John and a pair of sensible slacks.

I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words, how wonderful life is now you’re – eh, who are you again?

Spectre is a dense amalgamation of previous Bond films, both within the Craig tetralogy and the franchise as a whole, coming full circle within the reboot continuity while reintroducing classic characters and concepts. But as much as it’s beholden to the letter of the James Bond traditions, it fundamentally fails to capture the spirit, which flits away like a butterfly, always in sight but just out of reach.

Take the opening pre-credits scene. Bond takes a woman into his Mexico City hotel room, tells her he’ll be right back, and slips out the window. Thus ensues an explosive action sequence, taking Bond through crumbling mortar, the thrumming Dia de Los Muertos parade, and into the air over a teeming mass of bodies while a percussive drum beat smashes into and merges with the classic James Bond theme.

It’s stylish, high octane perfection, but instead of Bond dusting off, casually adjusting his tie, and returning triumphantly to his lady, we cut immediately into Sam Smith warbling “Writing’s on the Wall” over a singularly uninspired credits sequence. Look, as much as Bond’s I Love Lucy chocolate conveyor belt of conquests is haphazardly misogynistic, it’s all part of the came charm of his character, and the missing button from that scene cuts Spectre off at the knees.

Plus, that lady probably racked up thousands in minibar charges while abandoned in that room for hours.

Admittedly there are a handful of moments that embrace the campy appeal of the character, many of which are pretty unequivocally the best moments in the film. However, the degree to which you are asked to turn your brain off is in direct conflict with the length and girth of the stick up Spectre’s ass. In grand Christopher Nolan tradition, Spectre shrouds itself in dark, gritty realism that blocks out the fun factor as effectively as a smothering layer of gold paint. In fact, the Dark Knight gloomsmith was actually approached to direct this film, so that should tell you where returning director Sam Mendes’ (of American Beauty, somehow) ambitions lay.

The amount of time Spectre spends on its knees kissing your boots, begging, groveling for you to take it seriously is its very downfall. It’s never a good idea to approach a Bond flick with an eye for realism, but with this particular entry – and its plot holes big enough to host bar mitzvahs in – it’s cinematic suicide. The second you boot up your brain, the threadbare patchwork of the plot unravels in your hands, leaving you to stare in perplexion at a disheveled mass of thread.

Of course, this is a spy movie, so a certain amount of narrative tomfoolery is permitted (arbitrary countdowns, Rube Goldberg death traps that permit the hero ample time to escape, and the like). It’s all in good fun, but Spectre’s deficiencies sink much deeper than the average espionage flick. Characters mysteriously vanish never to be heard from again, plot points are introduced but never followed up on, and many of the blistering actions sequences take place in preternaturally empty environs. Spectre’s Ghost Train rivals even Halloween II’s Silent Hospital in terms of normally bustling locations that appear to have been abruptly abandoned, leaving only the core cast and maybe a handsome porter for decoration. It’s like they filmed on the Bermuda Triangle or something.

Or maybe the European extras were just all on vacation.

There’s a lot wrong with Spectre, nearly all of which is showcased in the interminable third act (when only two trailers played before this film, I knew it was a portent of doom for my bladder). A vast majority of the plot is pointless wheel spinning and wearisome monologues that leave your adrenal glands parched and shriveled. 

Perhaps it would work better if it balanced on a different central couple, because the crude archetype that Madeleine is brutally crammed into during the finale is hardly appropriate for her character or her shallow relationship with Bond. Watching her blankly go through the motions of a more developed plot only draws attention to the anemic characterizations that populate the film.

Christoph Waltz gives a game attempt at overcoming the peculiar inadequacies of his character, who is rejected from the plot like a bad skin graft. But there is only so much menace he can breathe into the banal, chinos-clad villain with sharply defined motivation but a wicked plan so vague that one can only assume he’s working from a first draft.

But there’s one thing I haven’t talked about: the action. It isn’t particularly original, but it’s as dazzling as altogether too much money can buy. There’s only so many times I can watch a secret agent discover a hidden door or punch an indestructible henchman (this time a totally wasted Dave Bautista) in the face, but this is the one element where Spectre totally embraces its over-the-top pedigree. Armed with his pistol that has the range of a rifle and the delicacy of a dart, Bond sweeps through the massive, inexplicably varied setpieces with relative aplomb.

It’s not enough to fully redeem the film form its monotonous, triumphantly silly depths, but it’s a totally adequate night at the movies. It will hold your attention more often than not, and in today’s climate sometimes that’s the best you can get. If you come into Spectre with an open mind, it does give you some bang for its buck. While 300 million bangs can be exhausting, it’s still quite a spectacle to behold.

TL;DR: Spectre is an acceptable trifle, but a plodding, unsatisfying James Bond movie.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1367

This Is Your Captive Speaking

Year: 2005

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Again, let’s revel in our newfound post-Halloween freedom by continuing our post-mortem exploration of he late, great horror maven Wes Craven. As I set out to watch my way through the portions of his filmography that I hadn’t seen or reviewed before, I realized that most of the ones I missed, I’d missed for good reason. Part of why I admire Craven is the fact that he pushes himself to new horizons, even if he is trapped into the horror genre thanks to Hollywood’s compulsive pigeonholing. That experimentation resulted in some gems and some duds, but I always say you’re not growing as an artist if you don’t produce a few clunkers.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I particularly want to be exposed to the clunkers, however philosophically stimulating they may be. But even if I’d already cleared the shelf of out-and-out classics before Craven’s passing, he still left some nuggets of inimitable genre filmmaking behind to refresh the intrepid completist. One such nugget is Red Eye, a star-studded thriller from 2005 and his last feature film of the 2000’s, to be followed by just two final efforts in 2010 and 2011: Scream 4 (a shallow but underrated franchise film) and My Soul to Take (uh… I’ll get back to you on that one).

I try to focus on the positive things in life.

Lisa Reiser (Rachel McAdams) is the manager of a prominent Florida hotel. When a high-ranking government official comes to stay with his family, she rushes from her hometown (where she was attending a funeral) on a late night flight so she can properly accommodate him and his security contingent. Unfortunately her plane is delayed and that duty falls to her anxious coworker Cynthia (Jayma Mays, who is the adorable love child of a puppy and a field of daisies). Lisa meets follow passenger Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy), who strikes up a hesitant flirtation.

She quickly learns that y0ou should never trust anyone with the cheekbones of a cadaver, because when the plane takes off, Jack reveals his true intentions. He tells Lisa that, if she doesn’t pulls strings and get the politician to transfer to a specifically targeted room, his agent will murder her father (Brian Cox, the original Hannibal Lecter from Manhunter, who loads around even more than the cellbound cannibal). Thus begins an epic cat and mouse game played on the smallest of scales –a  cramped airplane cabin.

Murder threats are still preferable to screaming babies though, to be honest.

If Music of the Heart hadn’t bowed its way into theaters in 1999, I’d say Red Eye was the most atypical Craven flick yet. A thriller without a whiff of the supernatural (or Craven’s dietary staple of dream sequences) and largely free from gonzo gore, it might still technically be a genre flick, but it’s about as similar to The Hills Have Eyes as Lady and the Tramp. As we’ve learned, Craven would have given his left foot to do another movie that wasn’t horror, and he knew this was one of the last life preservers floating toward non-genre shores. With that in mind, he really put his all into creating the best thriller procedural he could, and it shows.

Without a Craven-penned script, his personality is a little less evident in the film itself, but Red Eye is nothing less than a perfectly functional nail-biting thriller. It’s a well-oiled B-movie machine, performing its job to a T and bleaching every last shred of color from your knuckles in the process. From its unassuming opening credits to its bloody finale, all Red Eye wants to do is get in, jangle some nerves, then jet the hell outta there, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong with people who don’t think twice when a Cillian Murphy character comes on to them.

Red Eye is all about setups and payoffs, with nearly every element in the first act coming into play by the closing credits. This Rube Goldbergian plotting keeps the audience engaged, constantly guessing the next way Rachel Madams will attempt to MacGyver her way out of the situation. It’s clever, satisfying, and frequently intense.

These are perhaps two of the most accomplished actors Craven has ever been afforded the chance to work with (well, them and Meryl. And Johnny Depp’s midriff), and he takes full advantage of their range, maintaining a seething emotional undercurrent beneath the crackerjack thrills. The characters might not be totally three-dimensional, but at the very least they’re two-and-a-half-dimensional, and they sell every twist and turn, even in the strangely distended final twenty minutes. 

The film’s pace never flags, even during the Birds-esque opening sequence that reties to trick you into thinking you’re watching a romantic comedy, or perhaps The Notebook Part 2: We Couldn’t Get Ryan Gosling, and though it’s hardly Oscar-worthy cinema, that is an unequivocally good thing. Red Eye is a taut, tense, no fuss no muss thriller. It’s so efficient, it could have a slot on the infomercial channel. If you want a simple, rip-roaring good time with a sprinkle of heart and a dash of political drama, look no further. Just make sure you buckle your seatbelt before you take off.

TL;DR: Red Eye is a taut, streamlined, nail biting thriller.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 905

The Devil's Playground

Year: 2015

Director:  Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion

Cast: Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

By every sense of the word, cinematic zombies are dead. The gargantuan success of The Walking Dead (and all the other sub-Romero shows that have latched onto its influence like remora on a shark) has creative a sucking void in the silver screen. Other than decent but hardly exemplary dribbles of undead revenants in flicks like World War Z or Warm Bodies, the gut muncher craze of the 2000s is dead as a doornail (that’s been shot in the head).

And out of death, rebirth. Spectrevision’s zombie comedy Cooties could hardly be considered a massive release, but certainly releases massive laughs, applying a jolt of electricity to the heart of the languishing subgenre.

Just when you thought you were safe.

If you’ve ever wanted a detailed account of how chicken nuggets are made, you’re in luck. Following a sickeningly detailed opening sequence that will get you swearing off McDonalds with the force of ten Super Size Me’s, young substitute teacher and aspiring horror novelist Clint (Elijah Wood, whose career path is always an adventure) discovers that  nugget-borne virus has affected the students in the school, transforming them into ravenous zombies with a taste for human flesh.

He must band together with the other teachers, including macho gym coach Wade (Rainn Wilson), his girlfriend and Clint’s crush Lucy (Alison Pill), right wing Sarah Palin clone Rebekkah (Nasim Pedrad), socially awkward biology teacher Doug (Leigh Whannell, who also co-wrote the script), and Jack McBrayer character Tracy (Jack McBrayer), as well as the few surviving students, to attempt to beat back the horde and survive the day. So, basically, a regular shift for a substitute teacher.

Ask not for whom the school bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Whenever one is assessing a horror comedy, it’s always important to get a bead on which genre it favors. It just wouldn’t do to go into Ghostbusters expecting spine-chilling frights (unless you’re six-year-old me, in which case it might just cause some detailed emotional scarring). So I’m going to let you know right now that Cooties is primarily a comedy, trafficking in horror scenarios and carnage, but always more content to tickle your ribs than wrench them out.

The element that separates Cooties from your average horror comedy is that it’s actually pretty damn funny. It’s of a sophomoric and irreverent bent, but if you open your heart broad enough, it’s a ray of sunshine. Only the main characters are developed to any point past a particularly funny SNL sketch, but they provide such consistent humor that it’s hard to complain. In fact, the best moments of the film come from when it just lets the characters be themselves. Their rowdy caricatures match the heightened tone of the film, bouncing off of one another in epically silly displays.

The real strength of Cooties is its cast, most of whom are seasoned comic performers. However, their experience comes from such different mediums (sitcoms, sketch comedy, feature films) that bringing them all together leads to a tangle of unexpected directions. Leigh Whannell is perhaps the standout here, because his character is so deliciously strange (either he saved the best part for himself or he’s growing into his front-of-the-camera talents), but there’s not a sour note in the entire cast. Even Elijah Wood, whose experience lies farthest from the wacky, provides a clueless earnestness and a keen awareness of his character’s buried flaws that he’s a more or less perfect straight man and audience entry point with a few good punchlines of his own.

He’s the one ringer to rule them all.

Although the comedy is the focal point of Cooties, it’s still a pretty terrific film in other respects: We all know by this point that I’m a sucker for a bold color scheme (“You had me at that red wash”) but the block color lighting present in many sequences highlights the childish fantasy aspect of the film with lurid primary colors. At its heart, Cooties is about the generational war between younger adults and children, and these highly saturated hues emphasize how these character are desperately clinging to their juvenile motivations and antics. They’re forced to take responsibility and grow up when the new generation rises up, forcing them to assume more adult roles. And you thought that this was a movie about zombies.

I mean, yeah, it totally is. The gruesome, pigtail ripping, entrail gnawing “suffer the little children” gore setpieces kind of betray that. But Cooties is smart enough to use the Romero approach to its undead revenants, bringing them into a social and political context that elevates the film from its bare bones survival plot.

Isn’t horror fun?

Unfortunately, the effortless entertainment of Cooties has an expiration date. By the time the third act drags itself to the finish line on bloody stumps, much of the film’s high quality has deteriorated, It just plain has no earthly idea how to end, wandering from setpiece to setpiece as it attempts to find the missing link that wraps this whole story up It never does, and the film does end so much as it peters out. It’s like a song fading on its chorus, slowly deflating until it vanishes completely.

During the course of this lamentable excursion, a major thematic throughline (Clint’s horror novel) is abruptly dropped like a Beyoncé album, and the film introduces an unnecessary tertiary character that is both trite and kinda racist. Generic third acts betray a lot of quality horror films, but the chasm between the final twenty minutes and the rest of the film is dizzyingly wide.

However, Cooties pulls through on life support. The sheer exuberance of the first hour makes up for the creative deficit of the final third and it’s short enough not to painfully overstay its welcome. I do wish it closed at a much clearer point, but I’m happy it opened in the first place, delivering us plenty of insight, belly laughs, and irritating children getting what they deserve along the way.

TL;DR: Cooties is an exuberant, fun horror comedy with an unfortunately lame third act.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1040

Boy Toy

Year: 2004

Director: Don Mancini

Cast: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Hey, remember when I was reviewing Chucky movies? I must confess, I’ve been consuming media far faster than I’ve been able to produce reviews. Especially with the 12 extra commitments provided by my Halloween retrospective and Cardboard Science crossover, writing this blog has been a little like trying to knock down Mount Everest with a hair dryer.

Luckily, now that Halloween is behind us, my rampage shall slow slightly and I’ll have a chance to catch up with the embarrassing number of flicks that are rolling around in my backlog like cheerios in the bottom of a mom’s purse. Of course, we’re barreling full tilt into the Christmas and end-of-year wrap-up season, so this reprieve is but a brief one. Let’s get started,

Seed of Chucky, the follow-up to the spectacularly successful Bride of Chucky, is the first Chucky flick to actually be directed by longtime series screenwriter Don Mancini. It’s also his first film ever, as you can certainly tell. But while it might have the vibe (and budget) of a TV movie, it’s one of the wettest and wildest Chucky entries yet.

The franchise just hit its 16th year, so puberty is kicking in.

The film opens on Sh*tface (Billy Boyd), the bastard offspring of Chucky (Brad Dourif) and Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly). A living doll that looks more like a Tim Burton reject, he’s been making money as the world’s best ventriloquist dummy. But when he sees a promo for a film detailing the exploits of Chucky and Tiffany, he mistakenly thinks the animatronic recreations are his real parents. He heads to Hollywood and, using the same over-the-top voodoo curse that Dourif probably mumbles in his sleep after all these years, restores their souls into these new bodies.

Thus begins another hunt for human hosts. Tiffany sets her sights on the film’s star, Jennifer Tilly (Jennifer Tilly) while Chucky goes after Redman (Redman), a rapper-cum-director that Tilly is sleeping with in order to get the role of the Virgin Mary in his new Bible epic. By now you already have a grotesquely thorough preview of the film’s sense of humor and have likely already decided whether or not it is for you. Oh, and they try to impregnate Jennifer with doll sperm in order to provide a host body for Sh*tface, whom they have named Glen or Glenda, depending on who you ask. His groinal area is totally Ken doll smooth, so nobody knows what gender to assign him.

As far as I know, this is cinema’s first nonbinary character. In a Chucky movie. This is why I love horror.

Obviously, this gender issue is hardly treated with respect and tenderness in Seed, the film where Chucky jerks off to a Fangoria magazine. But it is approached as a valid decision for Glen/Glenda to make, which is fascinating territory for a slasher film to mine. Of course, as driven by psychosexual penetration as the genre is, there’s nary a shred of doubt that Glen will end up as a boy. But the fact that the discussion is even being entertained is one of the most unique elements I’ve ever seen in a fifth franchise entry.

Of course, the entirety of the film is utterly unique, and not always for the better. Here, the post-Scream self-referential humor of Bride of Chucky is pushed to the braking point. There are some undoubtedly clever moments, including any time Jennifer Tilly and Tiffany interact (to their mutual pleasure), but the whole thing takes on the quality of a zany cartoon. It’s enormously difficult to take Seed seriously as a feature film and not an 11-minute adventure laboriously stretched on the rack to ill 80 minutes.

It’s just downright weird, is what it is. Overlit by what could only be three separate lighting kits, the film’s bright wash renders it flat and stagebound, eliminating any clinging wisp of scariness. But the sheer lengths the movie takes to entertain can’t help but work in spurts and starts. Seed has absolutely no place in the canon of the (admittedly goofy) Chucky movies with its wildly divergent tone, but it stays true to itself and never ceases to be diabolically fascinating. Between a John Waters cameo, Tiffany attempting to become a role model by curbing her urge to commit homicide, and Glen’s assumption of his heritage thanks to a stamp reading “Made in Japan,” Seed is the slasher like you’ve never seen it before. And one gag that calls back to The Shining is the most unexpectedly hilarious moment in perhaps the entire franchise.

You could say that Seed of Chucky is The Shining of… toy films? I got nothing.

As you may have been able to piece together, Seed of Chucky is astoundingly cheap. Double cast actors, low rent rappers, and hellaciously basic lighting plots do not a blockbuster make. This low-fi attitude also unfortunately extends to the puppeteering. Or doll-eteering, I guess. While the Chucky animation effects had been exponentially improving since the original film, Seed oversteps its modest means by attempting to breathe life into three entire plastic creations, forcing the quality to take a quantum leap backwards. Once again, the suspension of disbelief hangs from a gossamer thread, rather than the might iron cables achieved by the Bride crew.

Luckily, we’re not skimped on the gore. Though Chucky and his brood might have the lip elasticity of Tara Reid, the blood is just as gooey and gushy as ever. In fact, there may be more carnage in this flick than ever before. Despite the dolls’ attempts at cutting back on killing, they accomplish a truly impressive array of splatter, including one of the best severed heads I’ve ever seen in a low budget film.

In the finale of Seed, Chucky decides that he doesn’t want to possess a human body. It turns out that he quite likes being Chucky. I think this film has come to that realization as well. Instead of being something it’s not, it flings itself bodily into the cesspool of bawdy, loudmouth humor and zany, drippy murder. It’s far from perfect, but it’s Chucky and Mancini reunited to have a blast and push the envelope. 

This entry is often written off as being the worst of the franchise. Well, that might be true, but in a series as inexplicably consistent as this, that’s not a damning statement. Remove your brain and unbox Seed of Chucky. It might just do you good.

Body Count: 10; the first two occurring in a dream, the third in a movie, and not counting three skeletons hidden in a closet.

1. Richard is stabbed in the chest.
2. Mrs. Richard slips and falls in the shower.
3. Santa has his throat slit.
4. Mechanic is decapitated with wire.
5. Britney Spears dies in a car wreck.
6. Pete gets his head dissolved with acid.
7. Redman is disemboweled.
8. Joan is blasted with aerosol fire and falls down stairs.
9. Stan is stabbed in the chest.
10. Fulvia is beaten to death with a doll.

TL;DR: Seed of Chucky is zany and ridiculous, but a charming diversion.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1200

Reviews In This Series

Child's Play (Holland, 1988)

Child's Play 2 (Lafia, 1990)

Child's Play 3 (Bender, 1991)

Bride of Chucky (Yu, 1998)

Seed of Chucky (Mancini, 2004)

Curse of Chucky (Mancini, 2013)